A Blind and Militant Attachment: Russian Patriotism in Comparative Perspective

Pre-war experimental evidence that Putin’s propaganda elicited strong support for military invasion among Russians

“…These findings resonate with recent experimental research on authoritarian China, showing that the Chinese are not all that different from citizens in democratic Western states (22,23). Research that is based on ordinary surveys has highlighted how Russian citizens are more committed to so-called "blind and militant patriotism" (24), at least in comparison to new and old democracies in the Western world. Yet, our experiment shows that strong baseline preferences for this malign form of patriotism do not necessarily in and of themselves translate into high baseline support levels for military aggression.…”

“…We show that ordinary people in authoritarian Russia are "prudent" (20,21) in the sense that they discriminate between the severity of different types of threats and do not appear particularly belligerent in the absence of threats. These findings resonate well with recent experimental research on citizens in the communist one-party state of China (22,23) but contrast findings from survey-based research, which argues that Russians score higher on measures of so-called "blind and militant patriotism" in comparison to populations in other countries (24).…”